5 U.N. Peacekeepers Killed in Lebanon

NADA BAKRI

Monday

Jun 25, 2007 at 5:39 AM

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which Spain’s defense minister said killed three Colombians and two Spanish peacekeepers.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 24 — A car bombing killed five United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Sunday, opening another potentially disastrous fault line in a country held hostage to violence and political deadlock.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the peacekeepers, who were deployed along the border with Israel after last summer’s war with Hezbollah. But suspicion immediately fell on militant Islamists, who are fighting the Lebanese Army in the country’s north. The United Nations force, Unifil, has been on alert for weeks because of that fight and several bombings that are believed to be related to it.

The attack hit two United Nations vehicles on a main road near the southern town of Khiyam. Witnesses said ammunition in at least one of the vehicles exploded after the initial blast.

“Apparently it was a car bomb attack,” said Milos Strugar, a spokesman for the United Nations force. He said investigations were under way. Security officials in Lebanon said there was also some indication that a roadside bomb could have been used.

The Spanish defense minister, José Antonio Alonso, said three Colombian and two Spanish peacekeepers had been killed. Three Spanish soldiers were also wounded, he told reporters in Madrid, according to The Associated Press.

It was another bloody day in this small Mediterranean nation, which has been hit by two years of killings and war. At the same time, the government has been paralyzed for months by a political crisis between American-backed officials trying to hold power, and Iranian- and Syrian-backed groups, led by Hezbollah, who are trying to take more governmental authority. Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, visited Lebanon last week and left having failed to hammer out a political deal, and he warned that time might be running out.

In the past five weeks alone, since fighting began in the north between the army and militant Islamists holed up in the Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp, at least seven bombs have exploded in Lebanon. Less than two weeks ago, one of those bombs killed an anti-Syrian lawmaker, his son and six others.

“From the north to the south, the whole country is now engaged, and the worst is to come,” said Hilal Khashan, a political analyst in Beirut.

On Sunday, before the attack on the United Nations peacekeepers, the Lebanese Army raided what was described as a militant hide-out in the northern city of Tripoli. The raid, in which six Islamists and at least four others were killed, was one of dozens stemming from the nearby battle at the refugee camp.

An army spokesman said the dead in the raid included three Saudi nationals, a Lebanese married couple and one Chechen, all described as militants.

Now, while the fighting continues in the north, the attack on the United Nations vehicles in the south confirmed fears that no corner of Lebanon could be considered safe. “It was only a matter of time,” Mr. Khashan said of the attack on the peacekeepers.

After Israel battled Hezbollah in the south for more than a month last summer, the conflict ended with a deal that called for the United Nations to dispatch a more “muscular” military force along the border with Israel. Hezbollah was ordered to move its military operations north of the Litani River. Since that time, there has been fear of a clash between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army, but until the bombing on Sunday, the south had remained quiet.

Hezbollah quickly condemned the attacks, as did the other partisans involved in Lebanon’s political conflict.

“Hezbollah vigorously condemns the attack and considers it a suspicious act that hurts Lebanon and its inhabitants,” the group said in a statement. “This act of aggression is aimed at increasing insecurity in Lebanon, especially in the south of the country.”

Condemnations also poured from leaders for and against the government. President Emile Lahoud strongly denounced the attack, which he said was aimed at destabilizing Lebanon. Saad al-Hariri, leader of the governing Western-backed parliamentary coalition, described it as “a grave terrorist attack.”

For Hezbollah, the attack is especially problematic because it comes in an area that it has long controlled; despite the presence of Unifil forces, Hezbollah has effectively remained the primary authority in the south.

Last Sunday, two rockets fired from southern Lebanon landed in Israel. No one was injured and a previously unknown group calling itself Jihad Badr Brigade Lebanon Branch claimed responsibility for the attack.

The previous commander of the United Nations forces in Lebanon had said earlier this year that Sunni Islamist militants were his biggest security worry.

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